Culture

The green of lettuce, the yellow of fresh egg yolks, and the red of the soil after processing livestock. Life in the North has long been about self-sufficiency and today young families continue to choose a lifestyle where everything that ends up on the dinner table comes from just out the back door. Sarah Artis dabbles and joins a pair of families trading the 9 to 5 for something a bit more hands on.

This year’s wildfire season was the worst on record. Photographer Michelle Yarham snapped some beautiful, haunting images near Fraser Lake late in the summer as the fires raged and the daytime skies darkened.

Sometimes adventures take a strange turn and, when they do, they etch themselves firmly in your memories—including the colours. Paul Glover takes us on a trip down the Nass, and the proverbial memory lane.

We asked six writers and one photographer (Michelle Yarham) to tackle this issue’s theme in whatever way they saw fit. What they came up with is quirky, funny, poignant, reflective, and uniquely northern.

Whatever we create, the environment we are in leaves an imprint on our work. Many artists crave isolation during the creative process, but some encourage outsiders to interrupt and even influence the direction of the pieces. Six northern BC artists discuss their creative spaces and what makes them so significant to the work they produce.

What happens when you come to a place temporarily and never leave? Or when you leave everything behind and venture out to northern BC for a job, but it doesn’t pan out? As our economy becomes increasingly reliant on transient workers, Dan Mesec investigates the temporary world in our half of the province.

Yawning and leg stretching at the visitor centre. The city connects highways and breaks up a train route, but the distances are vast. Some travellers collect brochures and pile them in their car doors. Others invest in small mementos: a printed mug or a wooden Mr. PG. A few leave behind their stories.

Tatshenshini-Alsek Park is iconic Canadian wilderness. It’s rugged, remote, and truly remarkable. Perched on a confluence of borders—BC, Yukon, and Alaska—the park is part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the largest protected natural area in the world.

The beginning of a thing is often not recognized as such until long after, or indeed until an ending appears on the horizon. Such was the case in the fall of 1994, when four dirtbags pooled their limited resources and headed north from Vancouver and the Kootenays to undertake a month-long sea-kayak trip in Gwaii Hanaas National Park Reserve.

Patrick Williston lives in Smithers in a mountainside home with a dark and spidery crawl space. When days are longer, you will find him and his family gunkholing around the Chatham Sea in an old sailboat. This is his first piece of fiction for Northword.

The best way to see ancient dinosaur footprints is in the dark. It’s also the best way to feel that tingly sensation on the back of your neck. Jo Boxwell takes us to Tumbler Ridge, where lantern tours of the dino trackways are a mainstay of the growing paleo-tourism industry.

In Haida Gwaii, the dark months of winter mean more time for things like hunting trips. Join photographer Joseph Crawford as he explores abandoned buildings and the subdued coastal landscapes while on a boat-access hunting excursion.

Travelling in northern BC’s backcountry means taking risks. Why we do we do it? Tania Millen weighs in, as she explores the dark side of risk vs. reward, and nudges us in the right direction for finding balance.

As the world’s oceans fill up with plastic, the beaches along BC’s coast are quietly accumulating garbage. Talon Gillis's photos offers us a glimpse into a group of individuals working to protect and restore impacted habitat.

Opening day on the Skeena came late this year. Kitsumkalum fish monitors were there working with recreational anglers to gather data. Britta Boudreau takes us to the river, and gives us a glimpse of what’s at stake if the salmon stop swimming, and who is working to protect the resource.

Salmon are a way of life in northern BC. This season’s closures of the sockeye and Chinook fisheries on the Skeena River are causing ripples of fear for a future with no fish in the rivers. Dan Mesec investigates the issues, and the potential cultural implications of declining stocks.

A slight breeze rustles the aspen leaves, and on it drifts the distinct scent of a northern summer. It could be a campfire or a Bar-B-Q, but when the days are long and when the salmon are running, the smell of smoke carries with it the flavour of curing fish and the promise of good eating throughout the winter.

Anyone who considers Canada a dull and uncultured country clearly hasn’t experienced the rich heritage of northern BC, where hundreds of First Nations communities provide the region with a history rooted several millennia into the earth and traditions that significantly pre-date European arrival on the continent.

It’s 8 p.m. on a Monday evening, and in the Stokes’ kitchen a Midsummer Music Festival meeting has just wrapped up. A teapot and half-empty wine bottle sit on the table. But what flows most generously are the stories.

People all over British Columbia homeschool their children, but here in the North it seems at times to be a bit of an epidemic. If you don’t homeschool, you might assume that the reason lies in some defect in the northern schools, or in the geography of remoteness, or even in a deeply-rooted religious fanaticism that you never noticed before. But none of these theories really proves out. Somewhat mundanely, in the end it’s just that the same qualities which draw a person to the north also draw him or her to homeschooling: independence, resilience, a kind of indifference to isolation, and a delight in making your own—well—entertainment.